Pac-Man game?

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 6:48 pm

Does anyone know of any Pac-Man game (esp. for a P.C.) that uses the original program where you can use the old patterns?

I've played a couple old Pac-Man games one for the Playstation and one for Windows98 (I think), but they both had the later arcade program that was brought in to stop people from using the patterns.

Did the original Pac-Man gaming company distributor just completely throw away that program and so it's gone forever? I've never heard any explanations on this.

Xelloss · Post by **Xelloss** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 2:52 pm

I wasn't aware there was a pattern change... I guess I haven't played enough old-school pacman ^^;

Both Pacman and Ms Pacman are available for the 360, but no idea which patterns they use.

I have to admit though, I've learned a lot in attempting to find the answer...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man

- Karen

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 4:36 pm

What is a 360? ?^_^?

The patterns were what made the game so fun. I had a hard time getting to the Galaxian bonus level without the patterns. After I got used to using the patterns I was able to play longer and I get better at it. Then I was able to play half the game with a pattern and half without. I could switch between patterns depending on how bored I was. It was a lot of fun.

The fun decreased when they brought out the pattern buster programs, but the new programs weren't the worst part. The worst part for me was that they made it so that on the hardest difficulty settings the ghosts would go a lot faster than you if you were eating dots. They caught up to you easily and you died quickly.

Some of those patterns were so fun to use. I liked the patterns where you went through the ghosts or where the ghosts reversed directions and for a while you were chasing after one of them very closely on the maze. If there was a little kid watching you do that they were usually pretty amazed.

Ms. Pac-Man was fun too, but that game was more like flying by the seat of your pants.

Xelloss · Post by **Xelloss** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 5:34 pm

Sorry, I meant xbox 360, those games are Xbox Live Arcade games ^_^

Yeah, I think the ghosts went faster than Pac-man in higher levels on the xbox 360 versions... guess it's using the updated rules.

- Karen

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 5:53 pm

In the early arcade Pac-Man games, if you got on a Key level and you ate dots...the ghosts would go faster than you. If you weren't eating dots on a Key level you would go a little faster than them.

But with the newer Pac-Man programs they had a difficulty setting they could set way up so that people couldn't play the game for too long. If you played a machine set on a high difficulty level designed to kill your gameplay time you might eat dots on a middle level (not even a Key level) and the ghosts would catch up to you about three or four times faster than on a Key level with the old programs.

They had one of these later Pac-Man machines set on a high difficulty level at the Disneyland Hotel when Anime Expo was there some years ago. I was happy to see a Pac-Man machine, but then when I saw the high score was like 65,000 I got suspicious. Sure enough, the ghosts were so fast I think I only ended up with a 42,000 game. That really sucked.

I wish someone could at least release the original Pac-Man program to video game console or computer so I could try out the old stuff again.

Do you play Ms. Pac-Man frequently Xellos?

Xelloss · Post by **Xelloss** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:01 pm

I played it a couple of days ago, which is why it shows up in my sig. The gamertag graphic shows the last 5 games I've played on the xbox 360. I'm trying to earn more acheivement points out of it, and the regular Pac-man game, amoung others.

The nice thing about playing on a console is that it doesn't cost extra to keep on restarting

- Karen

Cloud · Post by **Cloud** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:02 pm

What is the difficulty?

Xelloss · Post by **Xelloss** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:14 pm

More than you can handle.

soda · Post by **soda** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:45 pm

I can get you Mrs. Pac-Man. Played it yesterday:
http://www.jakkstvgames.com/

Xelloss · Post by **Xelloss** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 8:41 pm

Now I've been playing the pac-mans all afternoon, lol.

Those ghosts become faster than pac-man way too quickly!

- Karen

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 9:05 pm

soda wrote:I can get you Mrs. Pac-Man. Played it yesterday:
http://www.jakkstvgames.com/

Those look pretty cool. They sold those for Christmas where I worked. I should have bought a Pac-Man and a Ms. Pac-Man after Christmas when they began to discount them. I think by the time they got to be 30 percent marked down only the Ms. Pac-Mans were left and at 40 percent markdown they were all gone. The great thing about those is that they come with an appropriate joystick. A couple people I know said they bought them and they didn't last very long, but they said they were fun to play while they lasted.

But the first time I seen the Pac-Man games I was wondering which program they had on them. Now that I think about it, I've actually had three Pac-Man programs - Playstation, an Atari compilation for my 486 computer and a second P.C. for my later computer. In all three cases the Pac-Man program included was the pattern buster. So I became leary about buying another Pac-Man game. Yeah...that's mainly why I didn't buy it.

Xelloss wrote:Now I've been playing the pac-mans all afternoon, lol.

Those ghosts become faster than pac-man way too quickly!

Check it out. Someone has some Pac-Man patterns online:

http://www.mameworld.net/pacman/patterns.html

I believe that Cherry and Apple pattern should only consistently work on the original Pac-Man program. If you can't get those two patterns to work and you're moving the joystick properly then you must be playing one of the pattern buster programs like the three earlier games I bought.

I vaguely recall the pattern where you go through the ghost in the top right corner, but I'd have to have the older Pac-Man program in order to pull it off.

Keropi · Post by **Keropi** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 9:53 pm

This Pac-Man Championship Edition video brings back old memories of me playing Pac-Man in the arcade back in the 1980's:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w43GpBXAbSI

The thing I find most amusing about it is (compared to most other videos of its kind) is how often he comes to getting killed. He rarely stops moving. You can stop in the game, wait and try to accumulate more points, but I don't find perfectionist games as fun to watch as "flying by the seat of your pants" games.

I don't like that small piece of the wall on the map in the middle. Short areas of wall are the places I usually got killed when the joystick began to wear out. When the joystick goes bad it became too easy to accidentally go down the wrong path.

When you're on a real roll playing Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man you can feel where all the ghosts are at any given time, where there are likely to go and how long it'll take them to get there. When you're "in the grove" you rarely even have to reverse directions.